An elongated ball works just as well as a spherical one, right? The American football, a prolate spheroid, definitely proves that it does. However, if you prefer soccer and try to play the game with an oval ball, you will encounter quite the hurdle!
It’s pretty much the same with your eyes. Vision is at its best with perfectly spherical organs. Your eye’s favourite sport is therefore (let’s suppose) soccer. But, many of us are born with corneas that are elongated rather than rounded. Like footballs. What happens then?
In this case, you suffer from astigmatism! The light that penetrates your eyes doesn’t converge on one and only point on your retina. Thus, you cannot always focus correctly, leading to blurred vision, from afar as well as up-close.
Aside from astigmatism, you can have other refractive errors, such as myopia and hyperopia, for example. Not the greatest of combinations! But does it limit your choice of glasses and contact lenses?
Not at all! The lenses for your glasses can easily be adjusted to an astigmatism prescription. Better yet, while thirty years ago, people with astigmatism could only find rigid contact lenses, nowadays they have access to a whole range of soft contact lenses!
For example, our provider CooperVision offers more than 4 types of contact lenses suitable for astigmatism prescriptions: clariti 1 day toric, MyDay toric, Biofinity toric and Sapphire toric.
Don’t worry, there are plenty of solutions to help convince your eyes that they are soccer balls! For more information, contact your optician. If you've never tried CooperVision contact lenses before, enjoy these coupons!
